Letter: Race to metric

From Ross Richdale

I was disappointed by David Cohen’s article about the 1000 mph car (21 November 2009, p 38): surely in this day and age you could use metric units. In New Zealand and Australia we gave up the archaic imperial measurements about 30 years ago.

I know that the US and, to a lesser extent, the UK insist on staying in the dinosaur age but how can they be expected to join the rest of the world if a scientific magazine such as yours condones the continued use of this anachronism?

The editor writes:

• “The 1609.3 kph car” would have lacked charisma. The teams we reported chose 1000 mph as their target, so just this once, for ease of comparison, we used miles per hour throughout the article.

Palmerston North, New Zealand